This is AIDR calling
A nod to the late, great Joe Strummer as he brought to the globe a great radio show of diverse music. The work that AIDR does is also of great diversity. As I settle into the role of Executive Director for AIDR, I thought it would great to highlight some of the things that go on behind the scenes.
In exciting news, we have filled 4 roles within AIDR. These are the Manager Knowledge Development, looking after the Australian Disaster Resilience Handbooks, the Australian Emergency Management Glossary, What’s New in Knowledge, and the Australian Journal of Emergency Management. The Manager Knowledge Management, looking after the Australian Disaster Resilience Knowledge Hub and the Australian Emergency Management Library. The Manager Capability Development and Engagement, looking after AIDR’s webinars, masterclasses, Communities of Practice, the Australian Disaster Resilience Conference and the Resilient Australia Awards. We have also created a role to assist us with the writing of the handbooks.
I am pleased and excited to announce that Dr Mayeda Rashid has been appointed to the Manager Capability Development and Engagement. Mayeda comes to us from the Ethnic Communities Council Victoria where she was a program manager for the highly regarded Multicultural Emergency Management Initiative. She holds a PhD in Child Centred Risk Reduction from Central Queensland University and a Masters in Disaster Management from Dhaka University.
Lauren Lombardi joins us as the Manager Knowledge Management. She comes to us from the Movember Foundation where she was the Manager Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning: Health Literacy and Gender responsive Healthcare. She has qualifications in nursing, midwifery, and health promotion, and extensive experience in monitoring and evaluation in disaster risk reduction and recovery.
Dr Blythe McLennan will be our new Manager Knowledge Development. She comes to us from Natural Hazards Research Australia where she was the Node Research Manager for Victoria and Tasmania. She has an extensive and highly respected research career in disaster risk reduction, response and recovery. Blythe has a stature in the field like Madonna or Adele - you only need to say her first name you know exactly who you are talking about.
Natalie Connell will join us as our Senior Project Officer, Handbooks. She joins us from Department of Communities in WA where she has been working on their lessons management framework, and financial assistance framework.
In addition, Christine Belcher continues with us as the Managing Editor for the Australian Journal of Emergency Management through until the end of this contract period.
The AIDR team have been pedalling very hard to deliver this year’s Australian Disaster Resilience Conference which will be held in Perth at the end of the month. We are truly excited to bring the conference to WA, as we recognise the tyranny of distance for our WA colleagues with so many events being ‘over east’. We are also very excited to deliver a program that we hope will push people’s boundaries and thinking. I am particularly looking forward to hosting our workshop on systemic thinking.
The Australian Disaster Resilience Conference is our big set piece… but it’s not all that we’ve been doing. The revised Tsunami Emergency Planning Handbook is now finalised, and we are working on publishing a summary of the scoping research we undertook on Community Based Risk Reduction.
Our new brand-new Resilience Matters webinar series has been well received. It’s been so pleasing to see the hunger that our colleagues in the sector have for knowledge about disaster risk reduction. My former colleague, Melissa Matthews, said it would be really great to deliver a webinar series that is focused on stopping the problem of disasters, and we have been able to do just that. Over 2,000 people have registered for the first 3 webinars. Equally exciting is the new Spotlight Series, which seeks to shine a light on new and emerging topics.
I have recently met with 2 strategically important organisations for AIDR’s work. Firstly, with Katherine Feeney and Nadia Osman from the Australian Local Government Association. We discussed how we could work more closely to help local governments who are at the forefront of disasters in Australia, build capability, and help inform what good practice looks like.
Similarly, I met with Liz Bonner, the President of the Australian Neighbourhood Houses Association (and CEO of the Cloverdale Community Centre in Victoria) and Jarrah Kelly, the Executive Officer, providing an opportunity to start conversing about how we can support Neighbourhood Houses across the country who are often the first places people turn to for support. Neighbourhood Houses have a critical role in community-based education and support. I am looking forward to continuing these conversations.
I spent 3 weeks away from home in June at the Global Disaster Risk Reduction Platform in Geneva, then at the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment’s Symposium in Paris, home via Cairo to visit my daughter, and then to Natural Hazard Research Australia’s Research Forum in Adelaide. I continue to be struck at the depth of thinking and practice being applied by the best and brightest to the challenges that we face. These are difficult times, but also exciting times.
This month is the 30th anniversary of Arvo Pärt’s extraordinary album, Alina. I often turn to this album when I need to drop my blood pressure by at least 20mm of mercury.